How Has Motion Capture Developed?

The Standard Motion Capture Suit

The standard motion capture suit that actors use in movies and games are made up of a black tight costume that are covered in balls that light up. How it works is the actors are surrounded by cameras and the actors will act out their scene in the suit and the cameras record just the balls of light which is why the suits are black. The recorded footage on the cameras will only have the floating lights and they will be in the shape of a person, then the footage is imported into animation software and applied to a 3D model of a character who will act out the exact same movement as the actor did.

Facial Expression and Lip Movement

As technology improved, new techniques appeared for people involved with motion capture. Before motion capture could only capture a broad overview movement of the persons body but now it can capture the facial expression and lip moment of the actors face. This feature speeds up the character development process because now animators can allow motion capture to move the characters face automatically without them having to input them in manually. It also increases the realism of characters because if the lip movement and facial expression comes from the actors during their scene then that is the accurate emotion for the character during the story.

Xsens MVN The Modern Day Motion Capture Suit

The company Xsens developed a new motion capture suit that is designed to be more universal and comfortable for people wearing the suits. The suit looks like a everyday jump suit that people would wear for exercise but just inside the zip is the battery that allows the suit to be wireless. Now instead of the glowing balls stuck on the suit they are plastic flat pads the cameras can pick up and the reason for this is so the actors can do more stunts without anything on the suit getting in the way. 

Motion Builder

Auto Desk is a company that make various 3D modelling and animation software and they developed a program called Motion Builder. Motion Builder is software that specifically supports motion capture, someone uploads captured motion and a 3D model and the program applies the movement straight to a virtual skeleton that now moves the same way the actor did when they acted out the scene.

Virtual Cinematography

Early in days of motion capture the process was the actors acted out the scene and the animators took the footage and applied it to a 3D model to see what the final outcome looks like, if anything is wrong like the movement itself it would have to be filmed all over again. Now because processors have improved in computers motion builder has the ability to see what the motion capture applied to a 3D model looks like in real time so the actors can adjust there and then until it is right.

  
Reference List

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/a-brief-history-of-motion- capture-in-the-movies-91372735717.html

https://www.engadget.com/2014/07/14/motion-capture- explainer/

http://www.xsens.com/products/xsens-mvn/

http://listverse.com/2010/06/30/15-more-firsts-in-video- game-history/ 

When and How Did Motion Capture Start?

Snow White Rotoscoping

The first recorded version of motion capture was in the feature film Snow White in 1937. The version of motion capture that Disney used was called rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is when someone traces over real footage frame by frame and then uses the drawings in an animation, they capture the movement that happens in the video footage and then apply that movement to a character in a cartoon. The scene in Snow White where Snow White is dancing with the dwarfs was made using rotoscoping, the animators of Disney recorded a man and a women dance exactly how they visioned Snow white would dance with the dwarfs and then they traced over the video footage frame by frame replacing the people dancing with Snow White and the dwarf. 

Waldo

During the 1980s a couple of students in University designed and developed the first ever motion capture suit and named it Waldo. Waldo was then used in the Nintendo's Mario trade show to create an exciting experience for the fans of Nintendo, there was a giant screen with a projection on it and Waldo was linked up to the giant Mario that would appear on the screen and then an actor behind the scenes would  make Mario move and interact with the audience.

Rise of the Robots (1994)

In 1994 a game came out on the Sega Mega Drive called Rise of the Robots and it was the first game to attempt to create the movement of characters in motion capture. The game was a fighting game one player stood on the left and the other player on the right and they would fight until one of the players health completely depleted. Games at the time were made and animated using pixels because video games were animated frame by frame but because this game used motion capture it couldn't use pixels as captured motion can't be applied to pixels, so the game developers used sprites which is when the character is morphed from an object to an object and not created from scratch. The game received mixed feedback with good reviews about the how the game's movement looks really real and fluid however the bad reviews came from the games gameplay that most people found too simple which overall made the game boring to play.

  

Jar Jar Binks (Star Wars The Phantom Menace)

In 1999 the first prequel of the Star Wars saga was released and it was the first live action movie to create a character in CGI using motion capture. On the set of the Star Wars movie an actor was wearing a motion capture suit and at the same time wearing a costume of the character Jar Jar Binks, the motion capture suit was used to digitally capture the movement of the actors during his scenes while his character costume was to remind the actors which character he was playing. After the filming was done the motion caught from the Jar Jar Binks actor was applied to a computer generated Jar Jar Binks that would replace the actor on set in the movie.

Reference List

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/a-brief-history-of-motion- capture-in-the-movies-91372735717.html

https://www.engadget.com/2014/07/14/motion-capture- explainer/

http://www.xsens.com/products/xsens-mvn/

http://listverse.com/2010/06/30/15-more-firsts-in-video- 

game-history/ 

The Difference Between 3D Modelling in Movies and Video Games

The polygon budget - in movies the only thing that matters is meeting the deadline and making the model the best it looks with time and money that is given. In video games the number of polygons is limited because of the limit of the game engine and the platform it is played on. Movies are pre rendered while video games don’t get to be pre rendered which means the console has to render everything in real time (there and then the game is played) which uses a lot of processing power. If the limit is pushed every time a frame is rendered on the game there would be a delay if its an hour, minutes or even seconds and even seconds of lag can ruin a game.

Every time a new generation of console comes out e.g. ps3 and ps4. the graphics look better because the technology has advanced resulting in a better processor so the number of polygons on a model can be increased because the processor can render more in real time, why the graphics look better. Playstation 1 had 1200 polygons on its in game models while the playstation 3 has 11,600 polygons because the processor get better in time.

           

                 

  

The evolution of the character Lara Croft from Playstation 1 to the Playstation 4.

The amount of detail and polygons that goes into a 3D movie is really large e.g. monsters university if was rendered in realtime would take 29 hours just for one frame as technology at the moment is not capable. Consoles still have a massive limitation when is compared to movies.

Techniques to maintain detail with the polygon limit

A technique for 3D modellers to avoid the polygon limit is to use UV mapping to texture models, textures on models comes a long way to improve the realism of a character or object.

Another good use to get around the polygon limit is to apply less polygons to objects and backgrounds to the player that is far away as they won’t see the detail from a long distance anyway. A barrel up close will could have 360 polygons up close but then it could get reduced down to 230 polygons at medium range and then 10 polygons at long range. This will keep processing power to focus more on models that need to stand out for the player.

James Bond Golden Eye on the Playstation 1. The silent pistol in the players hand has significant more detail then the sniper rifle on the floor.

(http://blog.digitaltutors.com/whats-the-difference-a-comparison-of-modeling-for-games-and-modeling-for-movies/ - Reference to Modelling in video games compared to movies) 

Images Reference

http://micro-64.com/features/genrefps.shtml 

https://jamiehickmanvi.wordpress.com/unit-66-2/constraints-of-3d/